Every September the country tells the devastating story of 9/11 again. Nineteen hijackers. Four planes. Dots that never got connected. Somewhere in the second chapter is Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico–born imam who preached in San Diego and Falls Church, later became al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s English-language voice, and was killed by a CIA drone in Yemen on September 30, 2011. In that version he is a man who turned after the attacks and was understood too late.
The paper trail does not support that plot. For that trail the country can thank Judicial Watch and Tom Fitton. Their FOIA lawsuit, Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and FBI, No. 1:12-cv-00893, produced more than 1,600 pages, much of it previously classified. The files do not read like someone who slipped through a crack. They read like a man the government kept identifying and then waving through.
On February 4, 2002, an FBI employee ran him through a criminal-history database and got back a file that already labeled him a “terrorist organization member.” The alert told agents to approach with caution, not to tip him off, and to call the local field office. The next day the same man walked into an executive dining room at the Pentagon and spoke on “Islam and Middle Eastern Politics and Culture.”
This was not a post-9/11 panic file opened the week after the attacks. On June 15, 1999, more than two years before the hijackings, the special agent in charge in San Diego wrote the FBI Director asking to open a counterterrorism investigation on al-Aulaqi. Agents watched his house and the al-Ribat mosque where he preached. That is the start date. Everything after it is a choice.
The ticket file is the part most people never saw. On January 3, 2013, Judicial Watch released State Department records from the same lawsuit that included FBI paperwork dated September 27, 2001, sixteen days after the attacks, putting al-Aulaqi’s card next to tickets for Mohamed Atta, S. Suqami, and Al-Sheri on domestic flights. Tom Fitton said the dump left “little doubt that al-Aulaqi had something to do with 9/11 and violated the law,” then got lunch at the Pentagon and a “get out of jail free card.”
Judicial Watch said he bought the tickets. The pages are blacked out, and the Bureau would not confirm it. Four months after that September sheet, the Pentagon still put him at the head table.
The flights on that sheet were specific. Mohamed Atta, America West, August 13, 2001, Washington to Las Vegas to Miami. S. Suqami, Southwest, July 10, 2001, Fort Lauderdale to Orlando. Al-Sheri, National Airlines, August 1, 2001, San Francisco to Las Vegas to Miami. The same FOIA release said the cleric was uncooperative with agents working the 9/11 case and was already a focus of the monitoring. Other records in the suit described him as the spiritual adviser to two hijackers who had been in San Diego and later hit the Pentagon.
The lunch itself was not a hallway chat. Fox News obtained the internal Defense Department email that booked al-Aulaqi as part of post-9/11 outreach.
A DoD lawyer reserved an executive dining room for February 5 because that was the date he preferred. He was leaving town on the 11th. The proposed menu included pork. The lawyer who vetted him wrote that she had heard him speak in November and liked how he handled a hostile crowd. More than 70 people were copied on the invite, including senior Pentagon counsel. The email also noted that Nihad Awad of CAIR had “expressed interest in attending.”
The FBI was not guessing where he was that morning. Later releases showed the Bureau’s Special Surveillance Group, the unit used on terrorist and spy targets, followed al-Aulaqi to the building. The log is almost boring in its precision.
At 11:30 a.m. he boarded the Metro, Blue Line north, for the Pentagon. At noon, surveillance stopped at the entrance. Two unidentified women walked him in. The same team had been on him for months: class at George Washington University, a November 11, 2001 meeting at the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a November 15 appearance on NPR.
The vice file ran in parallel with the terror file. In a June 4, 2002 memo to Justice Department counsel James Baker, FBI Assistant Director Pasquale D’Amuro documented seven encounters with prostitutes in the Washington area between November 5, 2001, and February 4, 2002, the day before the Pentagon lunch. The Bureau tallied $2,320 and sought approval to prosecute al-Aulaqi. Surveillance notes added at least four more contacts in January 2002, the same window in which Defense lawyers were treating him as an outreach speaker.
Eight months after the lunch, he flew back into the country and should have been locked up. On October 10, 2002, customs at JFK flagged al-Aulaqi on an active passport-fraud warrant, a felony carrying up to 10 years. Agents held him. Then the warrant was described as “pulled back.” He was released that morning, continued toward Washington, and eventually went back to Yemen. Years later, an FBI official admitted the Bureau knew he was coming and that an agent had talked to a U.S. attorney about the warrant before the detention. The warrant was still live when they let him walk.
The missed chances did not stop in 2002. “Privacy Act Release Forms” from the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, signed November 14, 2006 and July 2, 2007, show al-Aulaqi had been arrested again. The papers do not say how long he was held or why he was let go. On March 24, 2011, six months before the drone strike, State tried a ruse: tell him to appear in person in Sana’a for an “important letter.”
The letter was a passport revocation. The Secretary’s determination was that his activities abroad were “causing and/or likely to cause serious damage to the national security or the foreign policy of the United States.” The embassy was told not to inform him that the letter was a revocation.
This means the official story does not survive the Bureau’s own dates. That version says no one understood who this cleric was until he was preaching from Yemen. The file is older than that. Investigators asked to open a counterterrorism case on him in 1999. On a sheet dated September 27, 2001, they ran his card against hijacker flights.
Key dates from FBI records released in Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State and FBI, No. 1:12-cv-00893.
That sheet did not reach the public until January 3, 2013. They marked him a terrorist in a database on February 4, 2002. They watched him ride the Metro into the Pentagon on February 5, 2002. They had a prostitution case on paper that June. They had him in a holding room at JFK that October and sent him on his way.
In 2010 he was placed on the government’s capture-or-kill list, the first American added, and the Office of Legal Counsel concluded that targeting a U.S. citizen overseas was legal under domestic and international law. On September 30, 2011, a CIA drone fired missiles into a car in Jawf province and killed him.
The Judicial Watch files are about the decade the government already had him on paper and kept waving him through. The official story writes him in late. The file starts in 1999. The question is why, with the warning already on the screen, the Pentagon still set him a place at the table.
